Posts from — May 2011

The Local Puppy Trainer notes that Local officials angry at some of Don and Matt Gaetz’s proposals

Not to be outdone by his son, state Sen. Don Gaetz sponsored a bill that would have eliminated the Mid-Bay Bridge Authority and two expressway authorities.

The senior Gaetz said he could have gotten the legislation passed — and saved taxpayers about $25 million a year — but the response from local governments, the Destin Area Chamber of Commerce and the county’s Economic Development Council made the effort seem silly.

“There’s a point at where you’ve got to decide not to fight to give people what they don’t want,” Don Gaetz said.
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[Read more →]

You get what you pay for, so as a public service-

Whatever they did last night at 10 PM PDT has resulted in a major problem beginning at about 2 PM PDT today. If you attempt to log on to a Blogspot site you get an error message beginning bX- followed by an individual identifier for the site.

They will probably have it fixed “real soon now”.

Update from Blogger Status:

Friday, May 13, 2011

We’ve started restoring the posts that were temporarily removed and expect Blogger to be back to normal soon.

Posted by at 06:07 PDT

McClatchy reports that the Newt is in the septic tank:

“I believe we can return America to hope, and opportunity, full employment, real security, to an American energy program, to a balanced budget,” Gingrich said.

He invoked Ronald Reagan and said that as House speaker he’d played a role in revamping welfare, balancing the federal budget and reducing unemployment. And in a nod to tea party supporters, Gingrich said he would be president over “a decentralized country under the 10th Amendment with power once again back with the American people and away from the Washington bureaucracy.”

In a boost to Salamander-Americans, the twit who closed down the US government over the seating arrangements on Air Force One announced his candidacy on Twitter. No word on what terrible disease his current wife has contracted which will “force” him to divorce her [wife-1 had cancer and wife-2 multiple sclerosis], but that will surely come as night follows day.

Well, he was in the House when a Democratic President and Democratic Congress passed the policies that brought down the deficit and finally balanced the budget after twelve years of “borrow and spend” under Reagan and Bush, but he spent most of his time ranting on C-Span after the rest of the House went home at night.

The man has the “family values” of a tomcat, and the political skills that caused the Republican caucus to dump him. Anyone who votes for him deserves what they get, because he has a long record.

[I apologize to amphibians everywhere for associating them with Newt Gingrich.]

It has been four years since the incident in Mossy Head revealed that the state of Florida had no law regarding bestiality. For four years the Republicans had been unable to create a law, but they were finally shamed into it … and they have managed to screw up and outlaw all sex because they don’t know how to write.

The options are for the law to be vetoed and wait for a new attempt next year, or to call a special session to fix it.

Instead of fixing the law, the world would be a better place if they “fixed” the legislature to keep them from breeding.

At the BBC Michael Goldfarb wonders Where are today’s Steinbecks?

He brings up the film, The Grapes of Wrath, as an example of the types of things that were coming out in the media during the Great Depression, and wonders why there doesn’t seem to be the same level and type of output today.

First off, as good as the film is, it is only half of Steinbeck’s novel. Every other chapter in the novel was reporting on the conditions in the country as the Joads were struggling in the main story. Steinbeck provided hard numbers to go along with the conditions of the fictional characters. He was a newspaper reporter most of his life, and he knew how to ask questions and report on the world around him. He was tied to reality as he wrote his fiction. He was writing what we now refer to as a docu-drama.

But the biggest difference is that very few people were isolated from the Great Depression. It was a long time before the programs of FDR took effect, as compared to the almost instant passage of the TARP bill to “save the financial sector”. Many of the “wealthy” were suddenly poor as result of the Depression, but they have been shielded in the GOPression. The people who would authorized a movie like The Grapes of Wrath, don’t understand how bad things really are, while Darryl Zanuck and John Ford did.

The pain is not being shared.

It is unlikely that anyone along the Gulf Coast in 2005 will soon forget Michael Brown of “Brownie, you’re doing a heck of a job” fame, and his tenure at FEMA. We were all bit taken aback when it was announced that Cold Creek Solutions had hired him as Vice President of Disaster Recovery Practice. They thought that they could get clients by offering advice from the world’s biggest disaster recovery screw-up?

So, I really shouldn’t have been surprised when I read today that Tony Hayward of the BP oiling of the Gulf has been hired as a “Safety Expert”.

It makes one wonder if doing your best is the way to succeed. Perhaps we should be telling children to fail disastrously? It worked for Brownie and Tony.

The Local Puppy Trainer reports on the annual homeless survey, and it is up 22%. The report says that the majority of homeless have jobs, and 55% of the group are women.

The problem is perception. The visible homeless are either men looking for work, or the small group of that cause trouble.

You can’t afford to rent anything down here with a minimum wage job. The deposits are a huge barrier, and if you have ever been evicted after losing a job, you choices are even more restricted. Most of the homeless shelters won’t accept you into their programs if you are female, sober, or employed, and there is almost no low-cost housing available. Many of those who qualified for the BP fund checks couldn’t get them because they didn’t have a mailing address. Most of the government programs are the same way.

There is only one program in the county that provides the employed homeless a place to stay and helps them budget and save to amass the money for deposits, to transition into the housing market. It has a dozen slots, which isn’t much help for the over a thousand people who qualify.

The Miami Herald reports that there are No applicants for state’s top education post

With a national reputation as a leader in education reform, and more aggressive changes on the way, Florida should be an easy sell for those seeking a new education commissioner.

But with less than three weeks until the deadline, the position hasn’t generated much attention.

In fact, no one has yet applied.

“We’ve definitely not received any inquiries and the firm has not alerted us to any,” education department spokesman Tom Butler said of the effort to fill the spot being vacated by Eric J. Smith in mid-June.

Actually, after the current legislative session, Florida is becoming known for slicing and dicing education funding, while imposing mandates from Tallahassee. The current education commissioner is unlikely to provide a “glowing report” about the working conditions under the new regime, so I think this will end up with someone’s brother-in-law’s cousin’s nephew on his mother’s side. Someone who cleans up respectable and knows how to agree with the “powers that be”.

The Florida educational system is in the mad rush to the bottom, trying to outdo all of the other states that elected Tea Party whackoes in 2010.

The National Association of Letter Carriers’ annual food drive, Stamp Out Hunger, takes place in most areas this Saturday, May 14^th. This is a major source for the nation’s food pantries who are having a hard time keeping up with demand.

Fill a bag with non-perishables and leave it by your mail box if you can. If you don’t have a mail box, most post offices will have a collection point.

While the USPS provides some support, this effort is driven by the carriers themselves.

The CBC is now reporting that the Manitoba floods declared provincial emergency

Manitoba declared a provincial state of emergency Monday afternoon as the flooding threat heightened in the southern areas of the province.

Canadian Forces members were being dispatched to Manitoba’s second-largest city, Brandon.

The province is also calling in engineers to find ways to increase capacity of a key flood-fighting mechanism, the Portage Diversion.

Water flows on the Assiniboine River are now well beyond diversion capacity and dikes from Portage la Prairie to Headingley need relief, officials said.

Normally, it is the Red River that floods the area around Winnipeg, but they have taken care of the worst of it through control projects, but this year it is the Assiniboine River in western Manitoba that won’t stay in it’s banks.

[Diversion = Spillway, Dike = Levee.]

CNN says that the Army Corps battles to keep the Mississippi out of New Orleans, but they are trying to keep a lot of other places dry all along the length of the River.

The Bonnet Carre Spillway was opened on Monday to divert some of the water from the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico by way of Lake Pontchartrain, but it will probably not be enough. The Morganza Spillway will probably have to be opened to divert water into the Atchafalaya River which will definitely cause flooding. It has become a matter of flooding the fewest number of people at the lowest possible cost.

A lot of the local flooding is being caused by small rivers not being able to drain into the Mississippi, and in some cases, the water level in the Mississippi reversing the flow. Another major problem is that the level is expected to remain high, even after the river crests, which will soak the levees and weaken them.

An oldie, but goody [my Mother liked it].

They extended the session of the Florida legislature a day in order to pass the state’s budget. Well, you can imagine how hard it is to pass anything when the Republicans control two-thirds of both houses, and the governor is supposed to be a Republican. 😈

The Miami Herald has documented the atrocities Florida lawmakers end chaotic session with $70 billion budget

The Senate late Friday night voted 31-8 along mostly party lines for the $69.7 billion budget that eliminates 4,492 jobs, cuts state worker salaries by 3 percent, trims taxes by $300 million, privatizes prisons and reduces regulations. The House took up the budget early Saturday, passing it, 79-39, along party lines. The House adjourned at 2:07 a.m.

And they include a List of the Idiocy.

Fred Grimm reviews one of them: They use our money to fight us

Don’t worry. Despite the most brutal budget cuts in state history, the taxpayers of Florida still have millions set aside for their epic battle against the taxpayers of Florida.

Both houses of the Florida Legislature managed to find plenty of money — also known as your money — for the slush funds underwriting their costly lawsuit against the Fair Districts amendments.

The Orlando Sentinel reported this week that the legislative leadership has figured on spending $20 million, and plenty more if necessary, to preserve their sacred right to re-draw state Senate, state representative and congressional districts in whatever squished-out, crazy-map shapes best protect their political self-interest.

You’ll be paying the legal costs to subvert a pair of constitutional amendments approved by 62.6 percent of the voters last fall.

They have taken the case to the Federal courts, hoping for Federal intervention in the affairs of the state. It may come as a shock, but Republicants only believe in “states rights” when it is convenient for their political goals.

They managed to attack women, children, the disabled, the elderly, and especially the poor, while they provided “tax relief” to corporations who aren’t going to do any hiring. They have made it easier to build houses when there is a glut of empty houses in Florida. On the jobs front, they put over 4,000 more people out of work. Amazing the amount of damage they can do in two months.

Update: in a crushing blow to the tourist scene in Mossy Head, Florida, after four years they have finally passed a law making bestiality illegal in Florida. “My Pet Goat” had an entirely different connotation in Mossy Head [nudge, nudge, wink, wink].

Osama bin Laden is still dead.

[That requires some knowledge of old TV shows.]

New York’s 26^th Congressional District is a rural, conservative farming area in the western part of the state between the cities of Buffalo and Rochester. Despite that, its Congresscritters are always good for a scandal.

You might remember Thomas M. Reynolds and his “heroic stand” behind a fence of small children to avoid being asked about his role in the Mark Foley House page scandal. There is no proof that he knew anything at all about the embezzlement of hundreds of thousands of dollars when he was chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee.

When Reynolds “retired” in 2008 the voters of the district elected another Republican, but Republican Congressman Christopher Lee had just begun his second term representing New York’s 26th District when he resigned. He thought people might not understand why he was sending shirtless pictures to a woman on the Craiglist dating site, being married and all.

So now we have a a special election, that, according to the New York Times, features Republican candidate, Jane L. Corwin, a millionaire New York assemblywoman, Democratic candidate, Kathy Hochul, the millionaire clerk for Erie County, and Tea Party candidate, Jack Davis, a millionaire businessman.

The newspaper says it is all about the Paul Ryan budget plan that Corwin supports and Hochul opposes. No mention of what, or if, Davis thinks.

Unfortunately they left out a candidate: Green Party candidate, Ian Murphy. Perhaps they don’t take him seriously because he isn’t a millionaire, but Ian did play a billionaire, David Koch, in a rather well known phone call to Wisconsin governor Scott Walker.

How can you not take a candidate seriously whose campaign web site is “Murphy Can Has Congress dot Com”?

He is also generous. Feeling that Jane Corwin, the Republican candidate, had a really poor web site, Ian created a better one.

They should elect Ian – he’s the one who needs a job.